Sample Final
In this assessment, you will apply historical knowledge and reasoning skills that you have developed in the class to a new set of sources.
Once you begin, you will have 120 minutes (2 hours) to read and write an essay based on ONE extract from the following documents:
- Primary sources: texts that were written in the time period you are asked about;
- Secondary sources: texts written by later historians that explain the time period;
- Multimedia sources: typically artworks – cartoons, posters, paintings, videos – from the time period.
When preparing your response, you may consult any external sources, such as your notes and the Internet, including AI tools, provided that you give proper citations.
CCP Central Committee Party History Research Department on “Two Cannot Denies”
In the following excerpt, originally published by People’s Daily on 8 November 2013, the CCP Central Committee Party History Research Department calls upon party members to study General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important elaboration concerning the “Two Cannot Denies” – that is, the historical period after reform and opening up cannot be used to deny the historical period before reform and opening up, neither can the period before reform and opening up be used to deny the historical period after reform and opening up.
Correctly Deal With Both Historical Periods Before and After Reform and Opening Up
From the day on which our Party came into being, it has made realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation into its own task, and has shouldered the two historical tasks of striving for the independence of the nation and the liberation of the country, and of realizing a strong and powerful country, and a prosperous people. […]
In subsequent practice, because of the development of “leftist” mistaken tendencies in the ideology of the Party leadership, grave comprehensive and long-term mistakes such as the “Cultural Revolution” occurred, which brought grave setbacks to the process of Party exploration, and brought grave disaster to the Party, the country and the people of all ethnicities. We can never forget the hard-learned lessons from this. That is to say, that we cannot deny the historical period before reform and opening up, is meant in general terms, it does not mean that we must overlook or even conceal the mistakes before the “Cultural Revolution” and of the “Cultural Revolution”. […]
The historical period before reform and opening up is closely connected to Comrade Mao Zedong. That we cannot deny the historical period before reform and opening up does not mean that we must overlook or even conceal the mistakes of Comrade Mao Zedong in his later years. At the same time, we can also not artificially exaggerate the mistakes of Comrade Mao Zedong in his later years, and can certainly not completely deny Comrade Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong Thought, if we do this, we will both violate historical fact and the will of the people, and this will certainly create extremely grave political consequences. […]
[…] Socialist practice and exploration after reform and opening up is the continuation, reform and development of Socialist practice and exploration before reform and opening up. […] During the new historical period […], the Party led the people in the successful creation of Socialism with Chinese characteristics.
History has already demonstrated that without the establishment of the New China in 1949 and the conduct of Socialist revolution and construction, the accumulation of important ideological, material and institutional condition, and the accumulation of both positive and negative experiences, it would be difficult for reform and opening up to be pushed forward smoothly, and it would be difficult to successfully create Socialism with Chinese characteristics.
We must persist in the basic viewpoints of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, and on the basis of fully affirming all historical contributions and fully paying attention to specific historical characteristics, closely grasp the dialectical unity of both historical periods, which can absolutely not deny each other.
The history of Socialist practice and exploration before and after reform and opening up tells us that to realize the Chinese Dream, we must forcefully carry forward the Chinese spirit. […] Looking back at history, the Party and the people are full of self-confidence; looking into the future, there are splendid prospects for the majestic motherland. Let us closely unite around the Party Centre with Comrade Xi Jinping as General Secretary, spare no efforts to broaden the path of Socialism with Chinese characteristics, and struggle untiringly for the realization of the magnificent Chinese Dream!
Hans Van De Ven on WWII and Civil War
In the following excerpt from his 2018 book, China at War : Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China (Harvard University Press)., Hans Van de Ven, Professor of Modern Chinese History at the University of Cambridge, discusses the meaning and legacy of WWII in Chinese history.
The War of Resistance was never about the defeat of Japan alone. For China was at war not just with Japan but also with itself. For the historian the challenge has been to combine China’s resistance to Japanese aggression and the simultaneous revolutionary war between the Nationalists and the Communists into a single account, an account that must be alert to the ways the two impacted on each other as well as to China’s fragmented state at the time. Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek was China’s wartime leader, recognised as such even by the Communists. However, even as the leader of the Nationalists he was more the convenor of a fractious alliance than the chief of a disciplined and structured organisation working towards a single purpose.
If China’s war with Japan resulted from Japan’s attempt to establish a Japanese empire across east and south-east Asia, the Chinese Civil War was the product of starkly different views within China about deeper questions made acute by the 1911 Revolution. These questions included: who was to have a say, and on what grounds, in political discourse and decision-making; what should China be seen to stand for; how should central and local authority relate to each other; what to preserve of China’s traditions; and what was the country’s place in the modern world. No mechanism existed to resolve these key constitutional issues, or indeed to foster compromises for them […]
Artificially separating China’s War of Resistance from the Nationalist Communist civil war inevitably leads to histories that are partial at best. A heroic account of China in the Second World War veils the fact that both the Nationalists and the Communists resorted to horrendous strategies, including scorched earth policies, flooding vast tracts of land, urban terror campaigns, murderous purges and the use of starvation as a military tactic. Unpalatable decisions and horrific measures are at times inevitable in war. Nonetheless, if the Chinese have every reason to be proud that their country survived one of the greatest crises of its entire history and to celebrate this as a collective achievement, historians must try to tell it as it was.
Excerpt from The Red Detachment Of Women
Set on the island of Hainan in southern China amidst the conflict between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) in the 1930s, Chinese director Xie Jin’s 1961 film, “The Red Detachment of Women,” chronicles the tale of a peasant girl named Wu Qionghua. Originally from Yelinzhai Village, Qionghua finds herself imprisoned in a dungeon by her tyrannical master, Nan Batian. However, her fortunes take a turn for the better when she is heroically rescued by Hong Changqing, a valiant communist fighter.
In the following excerpt, Qionghua joins a female detachment within the Red Army following her liberation. There, she undergoes a transformative education and emerges as a conscientious and heroic warrior. In 1964, this gripping narrative was adapted into a ballet production and subsequently elevated to one of the eight “revolutionary model theatrical works” (geming yangbanxi, or yangbanxi for short) during the Cultural Revolution.